Geary's Winter Ale

First Brewed: Between 1986 and 2003
Brewery Location: Portland, Maine, United States
ABV: 6%

History & Availability: Geary's is a pretty small brewery based in Portland - one of the first microbreweries on the eastern seaboard - and while several other breweries have been founded, grown up, and surpassed Geary's size in the area in the past 20 years, Geary's has remained about the same size since its founding in 1983. Their website even lists their customer service staff by name since there's a grand total of two of them. (How quaint!) Their beer is pretty ubiquitous throughout Maine but I don't think I've ever seen it in New Hampshire, so unless you're planning on taking a trip to Portland in the near future you'll probably miss out on this one. Their website says they distribute to 13 states but I'm not 100% certain that's accurate.

Appearance: Pours a clear but dark mahogany brown. Not much carbonation so far as I can tell so I don't expect the minimal head to last particularly long into the drink. Interestingly you can still read through it provided you have a backlit screen, so it really is dark by color and not by unfilteredness (which is now a word, don't worry about it).

Smell: Nice and wintry. I smell a little bit of fir but mostly sweet malt and butter. About halfway through the beer I had to come back and edit this section, I finally figured out what I was smelling, it's brown bread! (Do people outside of New England know what brown bread is? The bread in a can that you have with baked beans? Or is it just me?) Anyway it's really making me crave some good old bean supper, and I couldn't be happier since I bought this beer to have a taste of home and it is totally coming through for me here.

Taste: About as bitter as you'd expect from a winter ale, which is to say, not particularly. On the other hand Geary's has the presence of mind to stay away from over-spicing its winter ale as a lot of other breweries tend to do. The sweetness, on the other hand, is in great quantity here, with flavors ranging from your standard malts to sweeter fruits like banana. I really enjoy this significantly more than a spicier, nutmegier, cinnamonier winter ale so I'm happy Geary's went in this direction.

Mouthfeel: Pretty light-bodied for being so dark, but I bet that's the clarity working its magic. Carbonation is erring on the high side, and I guess I was wrong about the head being liable to dissipate because it's retaining itself pretty well as I get to the bottom of the glass here. I'm definitely going to call this good high carbonation as opposed to the bad high carbonation a number of other beers fell victim to.

Drinkability: High. Again, despite being so dark it is pleasantly light-bodied so you can drink several in a row. It also suffers less from the more-of-the-same syndrome that Shipyard Export had, for example, so it's easy to get through a sixer with no difficulty. I would definitely consider sessioning this beer, and it's nice and inexpensive too so that's not a prohibitive possibility.

Overall verdict: B, I was pleasantly surprised since I haven't really heard much about Geary's before. Fortunately I've got a variety pack from them so we'll see what we come up with in the next few reviews.